Shoot raw, and open in Prophoto. Once ready to post to web or to print, convert to the appropriate color space (sRGB for web, and appropriate colorspace for your printer).

Because Prophoto is a larger gamut, the steps between values are larger.

Which = greater chance for posterization. I don't get why using a color space way larger than any colors in the image is preached as being the best path. A smaller color space will have finer graduations between each color.

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Stacey

Here's why: latitude.

If you manipulate hue, saturation, or luminance from RAW yourself, you may end up pushing or pulling bits of data from the wider gamut your camera sensor captured into the area that would be covered by the smaller gamut (say, sRGB) in which you'd prefer to output. (Your camera certainly does this when processing sRGB JPEGs itself.) If you throw out the wider range of captured data from the start of your own RAW process, then there's less data with which to edit, ergo less latitude.

But this is all done in the RAW software -before- it is moved into PS for final editing. There is no color space at "The start of your own RAW process". The need for a super wide color space ends with the adjustments in the RAW software. As you said, you have pulled the data the sensor captured into the smaller output color space.

Yes, you can do a lot in RAW if you are using Lightroom with brush layers, etc.

Might not be so true for people using ACR and Photoshop. One might want to use the layer adjustments in Photoshop to make significant changes to specific areas.

Everything you can do in Lightroom you can also do in Photoshop's CameraRAW. Including the local adjustments with the brush, circular and gradual filters etc. In fact, Lightroom is pretty much CameraRAW + DAM + a bunch of export modules slapped together in a more usable interface.

Now if they would only put the GPU acceleration in LR as they have in PS...